An Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of the Camera D'Or at the Cannes Films Festival, The scent of green papaya is set in 1951 Saigon, where 10 year old Mui (Lu Man San) enters household service for an affluent but troubled Vietnamese family. Despite her servile role, Mui discovers beauty and epiphany in the lush physical details that envelope her.

"As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam"--

It won't take long to fall in love with the subject of Painted Nails, Van Hoang, a Vietnamese nail salon owner who serves an ethnically diverse group of working class women with acrylic nails and intricate airbrush designs. Through the course of the film, Van unintentionally becomes a contemporary Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich. Painted Nails brings us unprecedented insight into the personal nature of the political movement to regulate one of the fastest...

"Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original - poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in...

Samsara: (Sanskrit) Perpetual repetition of birth and death from the past through the present to the future, through six illusory realms: Hell, Hungry Spirits, Animals, Fighting Spirits, Man and Heaven. Samsara documents the struggle of the Cambodian people to rebuild a shattered society in a climate of war and with limited resources. Ancient prophecy Buddhist teachings, and folklore provide a context for understanding the Cambodian tragedy, bringing...

A documentary of the Vietnamese band Dai Lam Linh, which has created "a unique form of popular music, which is both international in outlook and rooted in Vietnamese traditions and aesthetics." The group has faced numerous challenges owing to the disfavor of state-run organizations and Vietnamese censors to their experimental style.

A true gem of 1970s American cinema verite filmmaking re-released! The Phans of Jersey City fills a gap in our cinematic history of Vietnam by documenting a South Vietnamese family recently relocated to the United States. Evoking the realist style and domestic drama of An American Family, the filmmakers lived with the Phans in order to achieve a remarkably intimate and detailed portrait of a family in transition as well as a country in transition....

"Thien's first memory isn't a sight or a sound. It's the sweetness of watermelon and the saltiness of fish. It's the taste of the foods he ate while adrift at sea as his family fled Vietnam. After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don't get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Strawberries come to signify struggle as...

"A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster-a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman's relentless battle for environmental justice. By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers...